This could be anywhere really, couldn't it?

This review is a continuation of Tomorrow, When The War Began (Part 1: the book).

Tomorrow, When The War Began is a welcome change in direction for Australian movies. After the glory days of Australian cinema with iconic titles such as Mad Max, Crocodile Dundee, and Picnic At Hanging Rock, the industry seemed to spiral into a mire of navel gazing, self-indulgent, and boring films (with the rare exception, such as Kenny) This led to a palpable tension between film makers, who were fighting for their integrity in trying to tell uniquely Australian stories, vs. the critics who were arguing that audiences were becoming disillusioned with local movies that may have artistic merit but aren’t popular and bomb at the box office. Hence the hope is that this big budget production (purportedly $20 million) heralds the beginning of a renaissance in locally-produced cinema.

For that reason, Tomorrow has a very clean, “Hollywood” feel to it; the actors look shiny (glossy, even) and glamorous, and besides Chris’s long drawl during his little monologue, the cast’s accents are fairly neutral (at least to my Aussie-tuned ears anyway – international audiences may very well feel strongly otherwise). Ellie, Homer, Corrie, Kevin, Lee, Fi, Robyn and Chris are all competently rendered by their aptly chosen actors, but what I found disappointing – in spite of what I said above – was that the most important character of all was missing: Australia. The story could almost have been set in a small rural town of any country. Because the script attempted to cram as much of the book’s action into the 103 minute running time as possible, there was precious little time for lingering shots of the beautiful Australian outback, or scenes showing the laid-back, rustic lifestyle of the residents of Wirrawee.

From left: Lee, Fi, Homer, Ellie, Corrie, Kevin and Robyn

The script is an exacting adaptation of the novel, never quite rising to the level of its source material, and not bold enough to take more than the most trivial liberties to make the story better fit the medium. There’s even a line in the movie where Ellie says that movies are never as good as the book, which didn’t really seem like a joke so much as the writers’ self awareness of the quality of their effort. One particularly low point was a cringe-inducing moment between Ellie and Lee at Chris’s house: the pair are sitting at the window, and Ellie has these few strands of hair in front of her face that she inexplicably neglects, allowing Lee to come in with the stinker “I always used to look forward to geography class” before brushing it aside and kissing her.

Because the script followed the book oh-so-faithfully, there was zero tension for me as I knew exactly what was going to happen next. Jenny quite enjoyed it though, and constantly joined in with the cinema’s refrain of gasps during the pivotal scenes. Maybe if I had watched it with fresh eyes like her I would have enjoyed it much more. Hopefully it does well and brings about a revival of great Aussie movie productions.

An epic of epic epicness indeed.

In some ways Scott Pilgrim vs. the World‘s is like a Pilgrim’s Progress for Gen Y – a modern morality tale about love and self-esteem cleverly masked by fast-moving scenes and dialogue dripping with wit and irony. In order to win the girl of his dreams, Ramona Flowers, Scott must defeat her “seven evil exes” in videogame styled combat.

Scott Pilgrim is directed by Edgar Wright – the guy behind Spaced, Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead – so as you would expect, the movie is a triumph of fan service, pop culture references, comic-book cred and general awesomeness. The unfortunate side-effect of this of course, is that the movie has only very limited appeal to anybody who’s mental age is more than 16 – evidenced by its terrible box office earnings (in spite of largely favourable reviews).

Michael Cera in the lead role is a contentious but unsurprising choice, since he must be the only currently bankable actor with the right amounts of charisma and dorkiness to play the role of Scott. Other highlights were Ellen Wong as Knives Chau, who looks like she stepped right off the pages of a Japanese manga, and Kieren Culkin as Wallace, Scott’s gay roommate, who deadpans all of his (hilarious) lines and steals every scene that he’s in.

Frenetically paced and possessing of the highest meme density of any movie I’ve watched so far, don’t forget to put on your 80′s geek hat when you go and see it.

Here’s the trailer:

Ewan Macgregor looks a wee bit like Ben Stiller here, don't you think?

It might be considered a bad thing that I mistook the start of the movie for BMW ad, but a lack of the usual plethora of studio logos and the egregious product placement aside, The Ghost Writer turned out to be reasonably compelling viewing.

Ewan McGregor plays the eponymous ghost writer (who’s never named throughout the movie) who is hired by a publishing firm to tackle the unfinished manuscript of the memoir of Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan), former British Prime Minister. The previous ghost writer died on the job, and “The Ghost” – as he’s often referred to throughout the movie – finds himself caught up in circumstances that puts his safety at risk.

This isn’t usually one of my genres so I had to do a bit of reading to convince myself that it was worth watching (it was Jenny’s idea to go see it, based on David and Margaret both giving it 4.5 stars). It’s old school, which is actually refreshing in a retro-cool kind of way. The linear plot starts at a pedestrian pace, and continues ratcheting up the intrigue and suspense right until the climax delivers the “ah hah!” moment. The script does tend to plod along a bit, and I wouldn’t go so far as to label it a thriller ‘coz it wasn’t ever particularly thrilling. I’d liken it more to a slow-burning whodunnit (and being of that frame of mind quite early, I ended up accidentally guessing the ending – yay me).

Being completely ignorant of the controversy surrounding the director, Roman Polanski, I came out of The Ghost Writer thinking that it was yet another Hollywood movie that suffered from that great bugbear of mine: the American superiority complex. But for those of you who like me didn’t know (or didn’t care to know), Polanski is currently a wanted man in the USA on charges relating to sexual abuse of a minor back in 1977. He has been “on the run” so to speak (avoiding countries that are friendly with the Americans) since 1978. Given that context, maybe it’s not so much of a superiority complex as Polanski’s criticism of the insidious power of the United States in regard to global political affairs. Heavy stuff.

Onto rather more superficial matters, Olivia Williams and Kim Cattrall play the Prime Minister’s wife and mistress respectively, and while in the movie you get a full side-on of a gloriously naked McGregor, there is only the merest hint of flesh from one of the leading ladies – you can guess what demographic this movie is aiming for. Not that I was expecting anything… ahem.

But yeah, keep your wits about you, and remember: when you see the BMW ad, the movie has started.

Not the most exciting poster ever...

As a species, we’re remarkably preoccupied with issues of life and death. That’s all that matters, isn’t it? The Burden of Being. Religion, philosophy and art are only barely enough to contain our collective existential angst. We hardly need help in that area, yet our natural curiosity pushes us ever onwards in exploring the outer fringes of reality through various media.

There are bound to be comparisons between Inception and The Matrix, the two most notable examples of such works in recent memory, so let’s get it out of the way first. Both movies depend on the concept of layered reality – that is, what we perceive to be real may actually be a dream or a computer simulation, respectively, and other layers exist that sit above or below what we mistakenly believe to be singular. They both also rely on the notion of shared reality, where many people are able to simultaneously participate in the same dream or illusion.

So even though the plot, style and pretty much everything else is completely different, their philosophical underpinnings are pretty similar. Both movies lead us, the audience, to question the nature of reality and what we believe to be real. Yes, Inception is deeply intellectual so don’t go into it without your thinking hats on, lest you end up falling asleep and dream about the movie instead (or was your dream the real movie?)

Jamiroquai, eat your heart out!

Dominic “Dom” Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is an Extractor – a thoughts thief if you will, who has the ability to hack peoples’ minds to steal information. He’s also trying to clear his name from the murder of his wife so that he can see his kids again. A powerful and influential businessman, Saito (Ken Watanabe), offers Dom redemption in return for successfully implanting an idea into the mind of competitor Robert Fischer Jr. (Cillian Murphy) – an inception. However, this impossible task is made even moreso by Dom’s inner demons.

Many people who’ve seen Inception think it’s the best thing ever. Based on the strength of the story alone, it definitely is, but like a lot of reviews that I’ve read, the movie seems to lack a certain… something. For me, it’s the casting.

Why so serious?

Leo. Not much needs to be said here. The guy’s a great actor, and I’m sure some of the ladies find him very attractive, but as usual his performance carries with it too much gravitas. It makes the emotional experience of watching movies with him in it a lot like trying to swim through jelly. Then there’s Ellen Page (Juno, Whip It). While I adore her, her appearance in Inception was an odd casting choice. Alongside the other older (and taller) members of the ensemble, the combination of her mature demeanour and her impish youthfulness makes her appear as a little gnome. A different casting choice might have allowed for a more nuanced interpretation of Dom’s relationships, although I can see why Nolan might have deliberately wanted to avoid that, given that there’s plenty enough for the audience to keep track of without adding even more layers.

What does it mean?

Last but no means least, the ending. Don’t worry, I won’t spoil it for you, but debates rage on as to the relevance of the final scene. Personally, I think that focusing on it takes away from what I believe is the real question that the movie is asking – why aren’t we satisfied with our own reality?

A poster from the "Meet the characters" series

Toy Story 3 is a triumph for Pixar in so many ways: overcoming sequel-itis, thwarting the evil empire, and simply maintaining an unbroken string of hits – which is a lot easier said than done.

Andy is all grown up, and Woody, Buzz and the gang find themselves looking forward to either a life of retirement in the attic, or the threat of being thrown away. Instead, they’re accidentally donated to a kids’ centre where they find a new lease on life with an endless supply of kids to play with them, but all is not as well as it seems…

I found the movie to be a lot closer to the original than Toy Story 2, which is to say that I rank this one higher (but the original is still the best of course). This third and final instalment in the series does what it has always done exceptionally well, which is to combine imagination and the sense of wonder with an emotional core based in reality (unlike that other franchise, which presents vapid parables of adult issues dressed in kids’ fairy tale clothing). Only a person with the coldest heart would be unmoved at the conclusion of the movie.

The core cast of the Toy Story series

The plot of Toy Story 3 is not only entertaining in and of itself, but provides a most satisfying conclusion to the trilogy. Like everything about the series’ contrivance that allows toys to come to life when we humans are not looking, the resolution is neat, plausible and leaves nothing to be desired.

By the way, don’t waste your money on 3D for this one. It was not specifically designed for it, not does it add much to the experience, unless you really love the novelty of it, and aren’t troubled by the encumbrance of the glasses and the dimness that they cause.

And so we bid a sad, but fitting farewell to Woody and the gang (at least until they release the trilogy on blu-ray…)

—-

* Huh, I discovered that “integrous” – the adjectival form of “integrity” – is actually a neologism, one of those non-words that entered the lexicon through common usage rather than a respectable etymological history. Ah, the perils of an ever-evolving language.

The final showdown

Cast aside your doubts: the fourth and final chapter in the series isn’t too bad, although I must admit I may be slightly influenced by the fact that I got my tickets for free through work (I probably wouldn’t have watched it otherwise). It’s also mercifully short, with Shrek dealing with the consequences of signing a magical contract with Rumpelstiltskin and dealing with his domestic problems, all in a brisk 93 minutes.

The contract grants Shrek one day where he can return to being a real ogre, loathed and feared by the humans, and in exchange, the trickster Rumpelstiltskin takes one day from Shrek’s past. Naturally, there’s a built in gotcha, and the day that “Rumpel” takes is the day on which Shrek was born, thereby changing everything – Shrek never rescues Fiona, and her parents sign the rights to the land of Far Far Away over to the trickster in the misplaced hope that he could help save their daughter.

You could say that Forever After is a reboot of sorts. Shrek starts out alone all over again, and the movie loses all of the excess baggage accumulated through the earlier sequels. Other favourites like Donkey and Puss-in-Boots are also given clean slates, so that even the occasional rehashed joke felt fresh again.

But it’s not all good news. The original Shrek kicked off the franchise as a kids movie with adult smarts – the inverse fairytale of the ugly ogre who turns out to be the hero – but as the series progressed, the grown-up humour and story elements encroached further and further, until the point where we now have an adult movie that has the occasional amusing bit for kids. It’s still presented as a kids movie (especially with the pointless, gimmicky 3D), but the main theme deals with Shrek’s mid-life crisis, and there’s a scene where sexy witches dance to Beasty Boys music in a pseudo nightclub. Riiiiiiight.

Dreamworks just doesn’t get it. The original Shrek was charming and original, but Shrek 2 and Shrek the Third proved that they had no idea why, by dishing up smarm dressed up as charm. In spite of the above gripes though, I enjoyed this chapter more than the previous two because this time around I didn’t feel so much like as if the movie was watching me back with a smug grin, constantly digging me with its elbows going “Geddit? Geddit?”

And there’s no arguing with free.

The (large) cast of Summer Wars

How many movies do you remember seeing where the audience clapped at the end? Not many, right? It’s hard not to feel overwhelmed by Summer Wars, an ambitious movie that presents a rich tapestry of themes, rather than the loosely connected string of ideas going from start to finish that I’ve become accustomed to expect lately. I’m not quite sure what I would say is the main theme of the movie, but it could easily be any or all of these (and more):

• the dangers of the receding boundary between digital and analogue;
• the role of families and communities in modern society
• a restoration of pride in Japanese identity, history and culture

All this is told through the eyes of the Jinnouchi family, as they come together to celebrate the 90th birthday of their matriarch. There’s a a grab-bag of stereotypes: the wise-old grandmother, the quiet kid, the black sheep (an adopted son), the loud uncle, the gossiping aunts, and the uncontrollable kids, but because they each play a critical role in the story, and the very real and warm way in which they’re portrayed, made them seem to me like the most compellingly realistic fictional family in recent memory. This is one of the things that I love most about anime – how they often depict “humanity” even better than live action dramas.

This, of course, is set up against the virtual world of OZ – an idealised representation of the Internet. A lot of geeks might cringe and groan at some of the representations, but the makers did a good job of ensuring that things never gets so technical that ordinary people wouldn’t be able to follow. My measure of this as usual, is my wife Jenny. She had no difficulty understanding the comments that the story was making about issues that we face as the digital world continues to encroach into the real world.

Being anime, there were still some unfortunate genre conventions that were sadly obeyed, one of which is the obligatory nudity of a young female character – I really don’t see why when every other character’s digital presence was some kind of cartoon animal, the girl’s avatar turns out to be … a girl. Who gets (partly) naked.

Be that as it may, it’s a minor quibble to an otherwise excellent movie. If you enjoyed The Girl Who Leapt Through Time – or less likely, the Digimon movie – by the same director (Mamoru Hosoda), then you’ll love Summer Wars.

Now if only I could get a round of applause at the end of my reviews :-)

Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark/Iron Man

Ah, don’t mind the headline – it’s hard y’know, coming up with good titles. The words are supposed to be a pun on the word “ferric”, referring to a compound of iron – from the latin (ferrum) – but you knew that. And this is a review of Iron Man 2…

Ahem.

Marvel is a great brand – they have a stable containing some of the most famous and most popular comic-book superheroes on the planet: The Hulk, Spiderman, X-Men, Captain America – the list just keeps going on and on. I’d go so far as to suggest that any geek worthy of the title would count at least one of these series amongst their favourites – mine was definitely the X-Men.

Most of them have now been turned into movies, with varying degrees of success ranging from the absolutely dire Daredevil, to the brilliant X-Men (the first two, at least). The first Iron Man movie helped to bring up the average: it was Robert Downey Jr.’s big come-back, and the red armour and character of Tony Stark fit him like a tailored suit.

Iron Man 2 picks up almost exactly where the first one left off, with Tony Stark outing himself as the Iron Man. The government is miffed that such a powerful so-called weapon is not bound by the American system of checks and balances, to which Tony Stark replies that he “has successfully privatised world peace”. What follows is a kind of technological arms race as Stark nemesis and wannabe, Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell), enlists the help of the Russian physicist Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) to help create his own Iron Man suit, unwittingly helping the Russian to bring to boil a feud between the Stark and Vanko families.

This sequel delivers a much of a muchness, which is to say that it’s a competent movie that I was entertained by, but didn’t leave me with much of an impression. The dialogue is snappy, there’s plenty of eye candy in the each of the categories of the 3 g’s: girls, gears and gadgets, and the story is largely uncomplicated and coherent. It also proved that product placement really works, because now more than ever, I want an Audi, having seen them in here as well as in Date Night. An interesting side-note: there’s a scene in the movie where Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow kung-fu’s her way through a bunch of security guards. I could not take this seriously after seeing the climatic scene in Kick-Ass where the Hit-Girl takes on a horde of gangsters. I’m sure it’d have been a lot cooler if I hadn’t recently seen it done by an 11-year-old girl.

One last point: bear in mind that this is part of a new kind of franchise that is no longer just a long list of sequels. This movie not only sets the stage for more Iron Man movies, but also serves as a set piece for several other Marvel franchises, culminating in an Avengers movie in 2012. To get a taste of what’s next, remember to stay after the end of the credits…

This is similar to the poster that I saw. I would have expected a much different movie...

Talk about going in there with no expectations: last night my wife suggested we go watch a movie, and although I generally keep to the big blockbusters, I didn’t really feel like How to train your dragon or Alice in Wonderland (not to mention baulking at the thought of having to pay the 3D tax). Jenny said that she’d heard good things about Date Night, starring Steve Carell and Tina Fey so we decided to watch that.

Now, the only thing – the one, single lonesome thing – that I’d seen, heard or read about date night was a big cardboard cutout at the cinema, showing Carell and Fey looking… slightly dishevelled. Therefore I assumed that it was going to be your usual rom-com fare. Boy was I wrong.

... if I had seen this poster instead.

The first few scenes setting up the Foster family were as expected: the couple about to be bored to death by their marriage, their friends supposedly finding freedom by breaking up leading to a lot of introspective navel gazing, couple starts to do wild and wacky things to compensate, culminating in an epic battle of the sexes. Ha ha. Except that’s not what happened at all. Instead, at about 10 minutes in, the script took a sharp turn, stepped hard on the accelerator, and sent the couple on a wild ride (both literally and metaphorically) through the seedy parts of New York.

Date Night is still identifiably a product of Hollywood – glaring product placements, characters cut out from blatantly clichéd ethnic, socio-economic and cultural stereotypes – and yet it manages to hit all the right notes. Carrell and Fey were absolutely brilliant in their roles as Phil and Clara Foster, with just the right look and demeanour to pull off the “ordinary folk stuck in an extraordinary situation” schtick. Shawn Levy, the director, is the very model of restraint – a quality which is sadly becoming quite rare in this genre – pulling back on the throttle at just the right moment before a joke goes from hilarious to cringey. Overall, the movie couldn’t be further from the “slices of bread holding together a shit sandwich” that “I Watch Stuff” predicted it would be when the movie was first announced.

I also liked that Date Night was completely lacking in cynicism. The conservative in me rejoices that every relationship (bar the one that triggered the plot in the first place) has a happy resolution: people are generally portrayed as being worthy human beings, if maybe a bit quirky or eccentric; the Fosters work through their marriage troubles in a positive and constructive way, instead of being narky to each other and having to come to an emotional stalemate in order to get through the trials, only to have their differences and problems magically disappear by the end of the movie; and the bad guys get their comeuppance in ways that don’t involve moral compromise, wanton death and destruction, or wilful negligence.

Maybe it was just the novelty – for once – of not knowing, but I doubt that I could be this entertained by every movie for which I have zero expectation. If you’ve already seen Date Night, did you know anything about it beforehand, and if so what did you think?

"I'm gonna Kick-Ass!"

What if all it took to be a super-hero was not special powers, but the courage and the balls to put on a fancy suit and stick it to the bad guys? That’s the question Kick-Ass, from British director Matthew Vaughn, asks us to consider. After all, in this day and age, Social Media helps regular folks like Susan Boyle and Guyslain Raza (the Star Wars Kid) become overnight celebrities, so why couldn’t it help create super-heroes? Starting with this premise, the movie takes us on the wild ride of self-confessed nobody Dave Lizewski (played by Aaron Johnson) and his super-hero alter-ego, Kick-Ass, as he gains fame and fortune through a couple of instances of being in the right place at the right time.

He gets in way over his head when he takes on a crime gang to impress love interest Katie Deauxma (Lyndsy Fonseca), and encounters the father-daughter team of “real” super-heros Big Daddy (Nicholas Cage) and Hit-Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz). Their secretive and violent efforts in fighting crime and corruption result in Kick-Ass’s growing celebrity, which attracts the attention of New York crime boss Frank D’Amico (Mark Strong).

The movie contains many genuinely funny moments, such as when we are first introduced to Big Daddy and Hit-Girl, Dave’s fantasy “flashback” showing the possible origins of his super-hero persona, and another when he deadpans in a narration how “with no power comes no responsibility”. Johnson is just the right amount of gangly geek and dorky charm, Moretz is the epitome of “cool” as Hit-Girl, and Cage is a warm and endearing psychopath, bent on violent revenge after being framed by corrupt cops leading to the death of his wife.

The sexy, underaged school-girl assassin, staple of Japanese Manga

While I liked Kick-Ass, a few things made me fall short of loving it. The movie’s conceit depends on the fact that super-hero stories thrive on a deep moral conservatism: the epic fight between good and evil, whereas the hypocrisy is that Kick-Ass is presented through the lens of liberal American Hollywood culture, with its foul-mouthed script, lax attitude to drug use, and (IMO) almost-but-not-quite gratuitous sex scenes. In another bold move, the writers took a big step into the realm of Japanese Manga with the sexy under-aged schoolgirl assassin, and graphic and explicit portrayals of violence. This causes mixed emotions, because while I like both Western comics and Manga, this is the first time that I’ve seen the two combined like this and it doesn’t quite sit well – not fitting the “vibe” of either category, it is a new beast altogether. You can also sense this from the reactions and expressions of shock from reviewers who were expecting it to be more like other super-hero satire movies such as Mystery Men, than the more serious “graphic novels” such as Watchmen and its ilk.

Kick-Ass certainly doesn’t pull its punches.